Wanikani is too slow and the Radicals are Useless. also Why Can't I just level up in one day instead of 7?

[jgillman]

that was inspirational to read. I have a job that takes a lot of my time and sometimes I’ve felt stuck with my lessons and reviews.

Thanks for the kick in the butt! Slow and stead, I will see you at 60 some day.

[Mena]

how did you go so fast ? 7 days per level in average, 3 days per level from level 50 ?

[TamanegiNoKame]

I did it a very unorthodox way. Other people do 7 days per level averages in more normal ways. This is what worked for me though (definitely not recommended though, I will give the recommended way after this):

For the 7 day levels, (it has been a while so I cannot guarantee my memory is 100% correct) I would keep doing the lessons available on the first day until I had done at least all the radicals and kanji unlocked. Then, I would follow the SRS for those really carefully (sometimes life got in the way of that though). In the next few days before the radicals guru’d, I would learn the remaining vocab in my queue. Then, on the day they guru’d, I would keep doing lessons until I had learned all unlocked kanji. I would follow SRS, and in the following days work through whatever vocab remained. The way it worked out, 2 days a week were really busy and tiring, and the rest of the week was more laid back.

For the 3 day levels, there are enough kanji at unlocked at the beginning to level up in half the time if you want to. https://community.wanikani.com/t/the-fast-levels46-47-49-60-a-journal/23231 That kind of summarizes what I did and the experience if you want to give it a look. Basically, it was fairly tiring, involved getting up in the middle of the night, and would be hard to do if you have a particularly busy schedule.

Now, what I WOULD recommend after seeing what other users do to make 7 day leveling more regular and more relaxed (or whatever amount of days works with your learning speed and schedule):

Wanikani is too slow and the Radicals are Useless. also Why Can't I just level up in one day instead of 7?

@bahooney @Fang and others that might be interested. How to use WaniKani: Obs: this strategy requires the reorder script. Step 1: you need to define how many days you want to spend in each level. How do I do it? I make sure to know how long it will take me to do all the vocab of that specific level. I don’t care about leveling up faster, just so that I’ll end up leaving vocabulary unlocked from the previous level to do. If you want to level up every 8 days, you need to make sure you can do …

[Radish8]

I just had to chime in to say that every time I see @TamanegiNoKame pop up as the most recent poster on a thread on the forum homepage my heart stops a little because that avatar is so. damn. cute

[Mena]

thank you very much for your answer. it helps a lot !
and it’s true, your avatar is very, very cute haha I like it

[JupiterTomato]

@jprspereira

Waking up at the middle of the night is also complete nonsense. Your sleep is way more important than WK and the cool thing is that you can do both right.

…I didn’t realize how badly I needed that spelled out for me. Thank you for stating something that should have been obvious to my brain but was not at all obvious. I go overboard when I get excited about things

smh and turning off my 3am alarm

[tirrorex]

Nice, can you read with ease ?

[TamanegiNoKame]

Thanks! I would not say with ease, but I can read pretty well for only a year and a half of studying. For example, I can relatively comfortable read teen fiction level books without pulling out a dictionary too often. The main catches at this point are my weak grammar knowledge and my insufficient vocabulary, so if I work on those a bit, I am hoping reading in Japanese will be pretty fun within the near future. At this point, kanji is rarely a problem.

However, if I tried to read say a philosophy essay or a scientific journal, there would be a lot of difficult grammar and vocabulary that could still trip me up even if I knew the kanji. The only thing that can help in those situations is to learn the new vocab and grammar, but learning new vocab containing kanji that you already know makes it 1000 times easier to learn, at least for me.

But yeah, it is really exciting how much progress I have made through using wk. Best of luck!!

[Thundren]

When you realize your average level up time is over 100 days

[jesseberezan]

----- 産休-----

[LucasDesu]

This is quite late compared to when I was brought up, but better late than never.

@TamanegiNoKame

From what I have heard, Rosetta stone is not terribly useful for serious language study. The time I tried it for Spanish, it was painfully slow and did not take advantage of the knowledge that adults have which can speed up language learning. But obviously if you feel like that is working well for you, keep going with it. Maybe the Japanese is more functional then I have heard…

I second this Rosetta Stone is not as useful as other resources because it relies on the learner to infer the connections of meaning, form, and use with regard to grammar. Coming from English (in my personal case), this makes Rosetta Stone almost entirely unintuitive because finding these overriding patterns and making meaning of them is extremely difficult without any explanation.

@TamanegiNoKame

In my first language, English, my vocabulary grew vastly the moment I learned to read.

This is supported by research. I always tell learners seeking to improve their vocabulary to crack open a book.

[Kalas]

Do you have a paper in mind ?

[lsh3rd]

@TamanegiNoKame

Please tell me those are all rickrolls…

[LucasDesu]

Hedgcock, John; Ferris, Dana R., Mar 23, 2009, Teaching Readers of English : Students, Texts, and Contexts Taylor and Francis, Hoboken,
→ Since this is a book, you should refer to chapter 8 “Vocabulary Learning and Teaching in L2 Reading Instruction”

There are other published materials that corroborate these authors’ claims, but they are included in research compilations that I studied during graduate school.

If you have any interest in L2 reading, please let me know.

[Kalas]

Thanks ! I’ll be sure to give it a read.

[Safarigirl]

We were having too much fun in it, it seems…

[powerserge]

I just hit level five today, but it seems like I am averaging three weeks or so per level. How do you do it so quickly???

[TamanegiNoKame]

So, someone asked a similar question a bit earlier, so hopefully you don’t mind if I just link my answer I gave them. The short answer is, it takes some work but is not as difficult as it might seem if you approach it strategically. Good luck!!!

Wanikani is too slow and the Radicals are Useless. also Why Can't I just level up in one day instead of 7?

I did it a very unorthodox way. Other people do 7 days per level averages in more normal ways. This is what worked for me though (definitely not recommended though, I will give the recommended way after this): For the 7 day levels, (it has been a while so I cannot guarantee my memory is 100% correct) I would keep doing the lessons available on the first day until I had done at least all the radicals and kanji unlocked. Then, I would follow the SRS for those really carefully (sometimes life g…

EDIT- it appears the link inside my link to jprspereira’s post with lots of useful information did not work for some reason so I will link that below this as well.

Wanikani is too slow and the Radicals are Useless. also Why Can't I just level up in one day instead of 7?

@bahooney @Fang and others that might be interested. How to use WaniKani: Obs: this strategy requires the reorder script. Step 1: you need to define how many days you want to spend in each level. How do I do it? I make sure to know how long it will take me to do all the vocab of that specific level. I don’t care about leveling up faster, just so that I’ll end up leaving vocabulary unlocked from the previous level to do. If you want to level up every 8 days, you need to make sure you can do …

[powerserge]

Word up. Thanks!

[sirati97]

This made me look at the levels 50 to 60 and I cannot believe that I actually know 11 kanji from up there. wuuut (only meaning and maybe perhaps one reading tho)